Page 4 of The Love Position

Marcus turned, eyes bulging in his red face as he clocked her.

Sophia’s breath came faster, her chest tightening as if being crushed by a snake. She couldn’t find any words inside a head filled with white noise.

The thread veins in Marcus’s cheeks were as purple as his makeshift toga. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his irises had been swallowed by the darkness of his pupils.

‘It’s my birthday,’ he said, as if those three words explained everything away.

The woman bent over the sofa shifted to see who Marcus was talking to.

‘Darcie?’ Sophia stuttered.

‘Fuck!’ Darcie gasped, struggling to move away from Marcus. However, she was currently pinned between the sofa and his cock.

‘Er…’ Marcus began, his gaze swinging drunkenly around the room.

‘Can you get off her, please,’ Sophia said, her voice a whisper.

Marcus pulled out of Darcie and faced Sophia. Her gaze fell to his wet cock, rapidly deflating along with the man it was attached to, as if needing confirmation he’d been doing considerably more than dry-humping one of his nineteen-year-old students.

Scrabbling off the sofa, Darcie lurched across the room and grabbed her clothes.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered to Sophia, then tugged her friend’s arm. ‘Kiera, come on!’

Marcus stood and straightened his toga, his movements unsteady. ‘Wait!’

Sophia ignored him. ‘You can’t drive home,’ she said to Darcie.

Kiera started crying.

‘I’ll take you.’

‘But—’ Marcus began.

‘Come on, quickly now,’ Sophia continued, her voice wobbling as she tried to ignore her boyfriend’s whine.

Darcie and Kiera ran from the room and Sophia followed, snatching her keys from the bowl by the front door and unlocking her car.

Marcus followed them outside into the chilly night air. ‘Soph—’

‘Get back in the house,’ she said to him, then bundled the two women into the car, got in the driver’s seat and reversed out onto the main road.

‘Where am I going?’ Sophia asked as she drove towards the centre of Salisbury, her jaw tight with pain as she tried to keep her emotions under control.

‘Bishopdown,’ Darcie replied. ‘Miss—’

‘Don’t. Please don’t say anything.’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Hunter-Savage,’ Kiera snuffled.

‘It’s Ms Hunter-Savage,’ she ground out.

‘I thought you said they weren’t married,’ Kiera whispered loudly to Darcie.

Sophia gripped the steering wheel as if it were her only link to sanity. ‘The title Ms refers to an adult woman without her being defined by her marital status.’

‘So, you’re not married to Marcus then?’ Kiera continued.

Pain lanced Sophia’s chest. She’d spent nine of the last ten years hoping for a marriage proposal that had yet to arrive.

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